


On the First Day of Christmas my True Love gave to me

by Tsuki_Amano



Series: Stucky College AU [3]
Category: Captain America (Movies), Captain America - All Media Types, Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies), The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: Christmas, College AU, M/M, Meet-Cute, bucky's the resident assistant everyone needs, pre-seasonal christmas angst, pre-serum steve, sort of, winter soldier version bucky
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-12-16
Updated: 2015-12-16
Packaged: 2018-05-07 02:25:07
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,378
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5439974
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tsuki_Amano/pseuds/Tsuki_Amano
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Steve's all alone for the holidays and he really isn't looking forward to it. But a chance meeting with a certain Resident Assistant might change that.</p>
            </blockquote>





	On the First Day of Christmas my True Love gave to me

**Author's Note:**

> This is going to be another chapter or two longer. The fluff will be in the next chapter, but I wanted to pace things.

**‘Staying Behind for the Christmas AU- Part 1’**

The first thing that strikes Steve as odd when he wakes up is the quiet. For the first time in more three months, his entire flat is perfectly still. And while it’s not an unwelcome change ( _Steve’s head still throbs when he thinks about Tony’s last ‘get-together’ that he had held for his friends. It had taken them a week to stop finding cake frosting in unexpected places in the kitchen_ ), it’s **_unnerving_**.

As bizarre as it sounds, Steve’s slowly grown accustomed to the noise in his flat. There’s Clint who watches the most terrible movies anyone’s ever heard of and lives almost entirely on take-out and reheatable meals. He almost always forgets to plug in his headphones and so when Steve steps into the hallway, he’s treated to the sounds of fighter jets or this week’s protagonist being eaten by a giant earthworm.

Then there’s Thor, who for the most part is a nice flatmate. Except he’s **_loud_**. And when Steve says loud, he means loud. Thor has only two volume settings, ‘loud’ and ‘booming’. They can tell when Thor’s the one in the kitchen because he has a tendency to slam doors and cupboards and drawers.

Tony’s friendly for the most part. He’s got a great sense of humour and is sociable to a fault. Among the five of them who live in the flat, Tony is the only one with a semblance of a social life. He tends to have plans every weekend and Steve can’t imagine meeting the number of people that Tony meets in a week in his entire lifetime. But that’s not to say he doesn’t work hard. Because Tony pretty much lives in the library when he can. Steve has lost count of the number of times that Tony has come home after two in the morning, after being practically kicked out of the library by the security guards.

Among them, Steve has bonded the most with Sam who lives down the hallway from him. Sam’s cheerful and best of all, Steve can relate to him, which is something he hasn’t been able to do with anyone else since he’s moved. They end up talking for hours in the kitchen when they cook and Steve doubts he’d have adjusted so well to his new life without Sam.

He’s gotten used to having his new friends around him, and their absence is jarring. For a few seconds, Steve is disoriented but then he realises. That’s right. It’s Christmas break and his friends have all gone back home, back home to their families and friends.

But Steve hadn’t.

Plane tickets were expensive and Steve couldn’t afford them, which meant that he was spending his break here.

Sighing, he pulls himself out of his bed and drags his blanket off him, shivering at the cold. He rubs his eyes and checks the clock, wincing. It’s almost noon.

He didn’t have any particular plans but that didn’t mean he had planned to sleep his entire day away.

Sticking some leftover pizza in the microwave, he scrolls through his mails on his phone, his eyebrows raising when he notices that there’s one from Tony.

> _hey, remember those books that I said were due in january?? yeah, i may have screwed that up and they need to go back to the library this week. do you think you can return them? sorry!!!_  

He types his reply out with one hand, absentmindedly chewing on a slice of pizza.

> **Yeah man, no worries. I’ll head there later today.**

Tony replies almost a minute later.

> _thanks rogers! you’re a life-saver:*_

Sam’s sent an e-mail to him too.

> _Remember to stop by at reception today_ _J_

Steve groans. He had completely forgotten about that. He’d had to ask someone to repair and clean out their refrigerator.

> **Thanks Sam! I completely forgot about that.**

> _I had a feeling you would. No hurry though, just try and get it done this week._

By the time Steve gets back from the library it’s dark and raining and cold. Steve feels exhausted and soggy and sort of strung out. He’s walked the whole way to the library and then walked back and now all he wants to do is go up to his room and sleep again. He’s earned a few days of doing nothing, after all, he’s just survived the hell of finals week.

The last thing he wants to do is stop at reception and have an awkward conversation with a less than enthusiastic RA about his fridge. Taking a deep breath, he turns towards the door of the reception and lifts his hand to open the door, just as a gust of wind blows a sheet of rain into his face. He splutters and rushes into the safety of reception.

“You ok dude?” someone asks, and Steve coughs. Does he look ok? He’s pretty sure he’s dripping and he’s partially blinded thanks to the fact that his glasses are now covered with droplets of water.

“I’ve been better.” He offers weakly, and earns a chuckle from the other man. Drying his glasses on his scarf, he places them back on his face, finally figuring out who the voice belongs to.

It’s one the senior RAs, his nametag says **_James_** but Steve knows that he prefers to go by Bucky. Because Steve is a massive fail who couldn’t talk to his crush if his life depended on it.

Bucky’s good-looking in an unconventional way, with thick brown hair usually styled into a man-bun and icy blue eyes that twinkled when the light hit them in a certain way ( _not that Steve was looking_ ). He usually wore full sleeved t-shirts and sweatshirts which Steve knew had to less to do with the weather and more to do with drawing attention away from the fact that he had a prosthetic arm. But aside from that, Steve knew next to nothing about his crush, and in actuality, he knew he could barely classify this as an infatuation.

Out of all his dreamed up first conversations though, this had never featured.

“Um, I wanted to fill out a complaint form?” he winced at how accented his English sounded. It wasn’t like he couldn’t speak English fluently, it was just that he had a thick accent and it made it difficult for other people to understand. And sure enough, Bucky’s brow creased.

“What?” he asked.

Steve felt unbelievably small. “I’m sorry,” not really sure what he was apologizing for, his awkwardness most probably. “I wanted a form, for repairs and things.”

“Oh right, sure thing. What seems to be the problem?”

And Bucky helps Steve painstakingly fill out the form, patiently answering all his doubts and questions. When he’s done, he takes the form and looks like he’s going to go back to his work, when he pauses.

“Not going home for the holidays?” he asks Steve.

Steve heart clenches, “Uh, no. It’s too… yeah I’m not.” And inwardly he curses his brain, because now is not the time for him to forget how to string a sentence together.

Bucky smiles and rifles around in some papers he has on his desk. “Well, I don’t know whether you heard, but a lot of us, including some of the RAs, aren’t going back either. We’re going to get together on Christmas and watch some movies and have dinner together.”

He yanks out a flier and hands it to Steve, “Give it a look-through. If you’re interested, stop by. It’ll be fun and besides, no one should be alone on Christmas you know?”

Steve holds the flier close to him. “Thanks, I’ll definitely think about it.” He tries not to think about his mom, spending Christmas all alone at home this year. Sure Mrs. Carter and her niece Sharon have assured him that they’ll call her over for Christmas dinner and make sure she has company the whole day, but Steve knows it won’t be the same.

“Thanks again,” he says, smiling weakly at Bucky. “Have a nice night.” He leaves after that, not noticing Bucky glancing at him worriedly.

He skips dinner that night, because suddenly he feels tired all the way to his bones.

 

* * *

Come say hi! I'm on [tumblr](everydayindian.tumblr.com)!

 

**Author's Note:**

> I'm finally done with the hell that is finals week.  
> Except.  
> I am pretty much Steve Rogers right now. Ugh, all my flatmates (the models for Steve's flatmates) have gone home and I can't afford tickets to go home either so here I am.  
> Also that awkward scene where Steve meets Bucky? Yeah that was me because I wear glasses and the first time I met my crush, I was the same way. Granted the RA I have a crush on isn't nearly as cool. Not to mention the fact that I do have accented English, so I hate talking a lot here, because I feel so awkward.  
> Rant aside  
> After spending the day at the library typing this out (my flatmate actually left her books in the flat and I needed to return them), I will now be going back to file a complaint about my refrigerator. I live vicariously through Steve.
> 
> I'll be adding a second chapter soon with much more happiness in it ^-^


End file.
